rusting door knobs
by chandelure
Summary: They have to peek through so many different doors to get to where they are. They don't mind too much, though. —SilverKotone, AU


rusting door knobs

**kotone/silver**

.

They meet by chance, bumping into each other in the middle of the busy sidewalk, and she laughs and smiles and he just watches her leave, scared of her rainbow clothes and alltogethertoohappy grins, and he feels like running far, _far _away from her molten chocolate eyes and hair, but he can't, he's glued to the spot with her cheerful words and only when his phone rings does he shake himself out of his reverie and answer it.

He almost wants it to be her — whoever she is — with her laughing voice apologizing for nothing.

Except his wish is blasted out by his best friend, Gold, and so he just listens as word after word after _word _attacks his ear and he mildly ponders that if he surrounds himself with so many_ loud _people, he's going to go deaf someday.

"_Silver? Silver, are you even listening?_" Gold's crackly voice comes through the phone, and Silver starts because he wasn't. Gold sighs on the other side, but continues anyway — he's used to this sort of thing from Silver. "_Well _—"

Silver drowns him out again, not even thinking, and stares off to where he thinks he can see her silhouette.

.

The next time he sees her is when Gold invites him over to meet an old friend — from New Bark, Gold's hometown.

He knocks on the door bracing himself for anything and when Gold opens it and he sees _her _in the background, he's startledscared_happy_? And he'd said he'd be ready for anything, but there was _no way_ he was prepared for her staring back at him. Gold is chattering on and on and _on _like usual and then he notices their looks and he asks, "Hey, Silver, do you _know _Kotone?" and Silver mumbles and shakes his head _no_ but the girl — Kotone — says,

"No — I mean yeah, we bumped into each other on the street this one time, but — not really." And somewhere _deep _in his heart, he really wishes they _did _know each other, because the way she blushed just then made her look so —

"Really? That's so cool!" Gold's obnoxious voice breaks through the somewhatawkward silence and he sits them down next to each other and then says he's going to go _cook, _and they look at each other and she says,

"Gold doesn't cook." And he nods at her, because Gold _doesn't _cook. "So. How do you know Gold?" She's trying desperately to keep up a conversation and oh, all he wants is for her to be quiet because that voice is just too _nice _for him, him with his broken past and evil father and cruel life.

He shrugs, and she sighs exasperatedly, wondering what _on earth _she did to get stuck with him while Gold snickered evilly in the kitchen.

.

They bump into each other again at the park, when he's got his hands stuck in his pockets and isn't paying any attention and she's paying too _much _attention to the world around her.

When she looks up from the ground with scraped knees and sees scarlet and silver, and says, "Oh. It's you," he's angry because she sounds bitter and annoyed and where was that _laughter _from last time? And she picks herself up and dusts herself off and she's trying to get away from him but _no, _he won't let her, and she finally jerks out of his grasp and _glares _at him, and he's speechless because he'd never seen such an intense glare from _anyone_, and she storms off and he wants her back.

.

He's waiting for fate to push them together again, but nothing happens for a long time until he gets a phone call from her and he wonders how she got his number but shrugs it off and just listens. She's crying into the phone, nothing like the girl he thought he knew just a little while ago and finally he asks, "What happened?" and she goes on and on and he sits down on his apartment floor and cries with her, nothing like the Silver he's used to, because _Gold was dead_.

They meet a little while later, at the funeral, and she's dressed in black, not the rainbow colors he first saw her in, and stands limply, watching the tears. Neither of them have any tears left, so they stick together, desperately wondering what the hell went _wrong_.

.

Throughout the years, they meet at random intervals (some not so random) until he finally (out of the blue) asks her to marry him.

She laughs, then cries, and he's afraid she's going to say no, but in the end she answers decisively with a "yes!"

.

He later asks her why she was so emotional, and she laughs and tells him it's something like drama and something like a girl thing.

.

They get married without a best man, in honor of Gold, and it's half heaven but they still miss his stupid antics, even as the priest proclaims them 'man and wife.'

She later says she hates the term, because it makes her feel like 'woman' is different from wife.

.

So their life goes like this. They meet, they hate, they wonder, they grieve, they love. And a lot of other things.

(But that's not the point.)


End file.
